As Hollywood closed specialty divisions that aimed for quality and personal stories, as studios focus more and more on superhero sagas and action blockbusters, cinema fans have rightly wondered, who's left to make great American movies?

For one, the makers of "Precious: Based on the Novel `Push' by Sapphire," who assembled some of the unlikeliest ingredients — Mariah Carey, Mo'Nique, and a lead actress plucked from an anonymous casting call — to create a wondrous work of art.

The film isn't easy to watch and will test your tolerance for despicable behavior as a long history of physical abuse and incest unfolds involving an illiterate, obese Harlem schoolgirl.

Yet "Precious" — both the film and its grandly resilient title character — will steal your heart. Lee Daniels, in just his second film as director, crafts a story that rises from the depths of despair to a place of genuine hope.

This isn't a fairy tale. "Precious" doesn't strain to present some happy-ever-after transformation that simply never could happen considering the harsh reality in which it's set.

Rather, the film reflects an inner spirit everyone can recognize, that role-playing game we indulge in to get us through our big and small hard times, imagining our lives are different, better. That we are different and better.

Claireece "Precious" Jones literally wills it to be so, and as played in a phenomenal screen debut by Gabourey Sidibe, she makes an utterly believable and electrifying rise from an urban abyss of ignorance and neglect.

Adapted from the novel "Push" by Sapphire — who taught reading and writing for eight years in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Bronx, to students like Precious and her peers — the film is simultaneously tender and savage as Precious learns to apply that simple verb: Push yourself, push your boundaries, if others try to stop you, push them out of the way.

(The film debuted as "Push" at January's Sundance Film Festival, where it won both the top jury prize and the award as the audience's favorite film; the title was changed to avoid confusion with Dakota Fanning's sci-fi adventure "Push," released last February.)

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next